Not got the reference, no idea how true the claim is. But the claim has been, somewhere out there:
Now the country’s migration minister is celebrating the fact Sweden has “negative net immigration”, with more people thought to be leaving the country than entering for the first time in more than half a century.
“The number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level, asylum-related residence permits continue to decrease and for the first time in 50 years Sweden has net emigration,” Maria Malmer Stenergard announced earlier this month.
That claim being that they’ve totted up all the people who outmigrated over the past few decades but didn’t tell anyone and dumped them into the one quater’s (year maybe) figures and thus reached nett outmigration.
How true that is I’ve no idea but who would bet against a politician doing something like that?
Alternatively, they’ve managed to turn Sweden — Sweden — into such a hole that the natives are leaving faster than the replacements are turning up. Not sure which is worse…
Unless they’ve got some particularly bad news to bury, I would only expect that to happen in the last quarter (or year) of a government expecting to lose the next election. Because next quarter (or year) they will be found out when the numbers suddenly shoot back up again.
Bloke in Wales said:
“I would only expect that to happen in the last quarter (or year) of a government expecting to lose the next election”
Is it about trying to hold the coalition together? Possibly keeping the Swedish Democrats happy with a ‘policy success’ whilst getting them to accept some other dilution demanded by the Liberals?
I’d be interested to know where all these allegedly indigenous Swedish people of reasonable means (or else they couldn’t afford to get out) are migrating to.
It would be pretty Machiavellian for the Swedish Democrats. as presumably they would expect to see a rise in support when record immigration numbers are revealed next time, and pretty stupid for the Liberals to fall for it.
But you might be right.
I think we’re all far beyond believing politicians. In this case, better to try and establish how many new mosques are built in Stockholm next year…
Well, I read the other day that between 2021 and 2023, more than 100 of Norway’s wealthiest people left Norway as a result of Norway’s increase in wealth taxes.
Since Spud has repeatedly said that this sort of thing doesn’t happen, shouldn’t he be writing to the Norwegian tax authorities to explain that in fact these people HAVEN’T left and must in fact still be there?
On this weeks Last Orders podcast Chris Snowdon referred to Spud as “The Sage of Ely”. Wonder if he reads this blog.
Whatever the specifics, it’s clear that this civilised nation – that of Nobel, Bergman, Linnaeus, and Celsius, and birthplace of so much that enriches us – must for some reason be eradicated. When they’ve done it, they’ll probably tell us why.
He does, yes.
I’d be interested to know where all these allegedly indigenous Swedish people of reasonable means (or else they couldn’t afford to get out) are migrating to.
A lot of them seem to be coming here. It’s also interesting how much the Swedish people I meet seem to have changed in not much over a decade.
When I first moved here, Swedes seemed to be ostentatiously liberal. These days, any conversation with one will very rapidly move to Sweden’s immigrant problems. I think it’s because they are two entirely different sorts of people. The liberal Swedes were similar to some of the Brits we have. Comfortably off middle class, secure & unchallenged in their liberal values, opting for a relaxing sojourn in the sun. These days, they’re probably from the income group but are more like refugees.
I listen to what used to be the old Radio Sweden’s English podcast, and the weekly review is nearly non-stop whining about how immigration policy (which apparently has been tightened up) is making things tough on immigrants and how the native Swedes are so horribly racist.
I suppose it’s possible that people are leaving after their initial visas run out rather than applying for permanent residence.
@Ted
That’ll be the output of Sweden’s Guardian class. Sort of people I was meeting her a decade ago. Interesting that the UK still hasn’t managed to produce a party the equivalent of the Swedish Democrats. I wonder if you’ll get there before it’s too late? Reform’s so wet you could shoot ducks off it.
Seems very odd to “brag” that more people are leaving your country than moving in, doesn’t it? We’re driving them away, well done us?
I’d also note that fudging statistics is a long-time tradition, in the US if there’s a Dem in the White House there is an amazing trend – the monthly jobs report comes out & gets lots of attention, a very important number to gauge the strength of the economy. A couple of weeks later it gets revised downward with no mentions.
It’s just about possible that more vibrants are leaving than arriving.
Suppose you’re a semi educated third worlder looking for a better life. Sweden looks inviting.
But you find the language difficult, and end up in a dead end job or no job at all.
You discover that your kids are being recruited by gangsters to run drugs and other sorts of criminality.
The police do nothing as your ghetto goes up in flames.
Suddenly the old country, run by a merciless dictator, looks like a haven of peace.
I’d guess that any Swedes who are abandoning ship would have as much choice of destination country as the average monoglot Brit, since most Swedes speak remarkably good English – it’s obviously taught very well at school.
Is Swedish a difficult language? It’s probably easier to learn than English – less irregular and less vocabulary – is there a Swedish analogue of Roget’s Thesaurus?
However most third- worlders will have had some exposure to English from a fairly early age, if only from pop songs. That start probably helps a lot later when trying to become conversational.
Looking at a couple of headlines on thelocal.se
“Sweden to cut salary needed for EU Blue Card by 10,000 kronor”
“How Sweden’s stricter immigration rules are hurting the games industry”
Ah, what they’ve done is make it harder to get a work permit.
But Swedes don’t have a problem with immigrants who come to work and study.
The Swedes have an issue with those who come to claim asylum after passing through safe countries, to be eligible for benefits, or to marry their cousins.
The Oxford Continuing Education Department (aka Kellogg College – no, really) run Swedish classes. I’ve always assumed this must be because they have a Swede on the staff, otherwise why would anyone bother to learn Swedish? To read Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell (or, God forbid, Strindberg) in the original??
I’ve never met a Swede who didn’t speak better English than 90% of UK inhabitants (though no doubt there may be a few in remote areas, like Härjedalen). I think it’s practically a lingua franca among the Nordic countries.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are close enough together that they can 95% understand each other, while Finnish is (to quote a Swedish colleague) “fucking insane”. But the English-as-a-ligua-franca (ironically, Latin for French) gives a 99.9%+ understanding, so it’s used. I was at a hotel in Oslo once when there was a military conference on, and a Swede and a Dane — you could tell from the patches on their uniforms — were in Norway talking to each other in English. It was a little bit of a “huh?!” moment.
In any town or city in Scandinavia, just about anyone you meet will speak excellent English but with some weird idioms: the wilds are more hit and miss.
English is taught at schools, but far more importantly, American (and British) TV and films are widely watched and subtitled rather than dubbed so you hear English all over the place and kids just pick it up.
I’ve learned Swedish to fluency (I did a year is school there).
It’s a super easy language for an English speaker to pick up. Probably the easiest there is. The grammar is Old English, the verbs all regular, the vocabulary limited and the spelling 100% regular.
I’ve heard Swedes argue that they learn English so well because Swedish is really limited and so a smart person will want to learn something.
I’ve been arguing on Twitter that not only that it isn’t racist to insist that immigrants learn English it’s in their own interest. Furthermore if the left believe so much in multiculturalism they should be insisting on it as well.
How can we have multiculturalism if the various cultures can’t communicate? English is the world’s 2nd language so it makes sense they learn it not only to communicate with the host culture but also amongst themselves.
Furthermore, once they’ve learned English they can communicate across the world, opening up more economic opportunities.
@BiND… I reckon that English is the #1 spoken language in the world… Some of the reference sites state Chinese, but there are less than 1 billion Mandarin speakers as against some 1.3 billion English-speakers. They seem to forget that although a similar number of people speak “Chinese” that the only way a Mandarin speaker can communicate with a (say) Cantonese speaker is by writing… The written language is universal but the “words” are completely different when spoken!
@philip
Many recent migrants leaving is part of it, yes.
“Suddenly the old country, run by a merciless dictator, looks like a haven of peace.”
Far as I can tell, a lot aren’t going back but instead “asylum shopping” in other European countries. Seem to recall BBC reporting several of the drowned migrants on a recent failed attempt to get to Britain from France were part of the Swedish exodus – applications turned down, so left the country before they could be sent home and were trying their luck elsewhere. Got moved on from a few other places so England was next on the list, though they never made it – others will have done, though.